[PLUG] homegrown WAP

Karol Kulaga root at loraksus.org
Tue Nov 11 17:15:02 UTC 2003


Antenna placement matters quite a bit depending on which antenna you
are using. You can run a cable (or make a waveguide) but you will have
some (too much?) signal loss. Basically your average PCI card is
probably going to suck when it comes to power output. 
Google "host AP" or "software AP" for more stuff on the software side
of things. 

Here's a bit about antennas, basically gives you a very basic idea of
what antenna does what. 
http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/PoyntingAntennas

If you have a couple bucks, you might consider getting a soekris box
(kind of like a mini pc, a nice enclosure, has slots for pcmcia
wireless cards, etc.) 
Folks have debian running on them and usually nocat. 
http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/NoCatAuthFaq has a bit of info,
also see what I copied below. You have quite a bit of power in
controlling access, etc. 

Or. . . 
Get a Linksys WRT54G AP, Rob Flickenger and friends in Seattle have
found that it has full iptables support, bridging, etc. Tres cool. No
nocat yet, but hopefully soon. Sounds like what you are looking for. 
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3525

As I said before the average PCI card is low power, and it seems that
pcmcia Senao 200mw cards are the most popular card right now. 


-------------Keegan Quinn [ice at thebasement.org]
I've made some Debian packages of NoCatAuth.  They're based on the
latest nightly snapshot and include the stable-01.patch.  There are
two packages: nocatauth-gateway and nocatauth-authserv, for the
gateway daemon and authentication server, respectively.

The packages are available at the following APT source:

deb http://rune.thebasement.org/~ice/debian keegan main 
deb-src http://rune.thebasement.org/~ice/debian keegan main

I'd be glad to hear any kind of feedback about them.  I hope to get
these into the main Debian pool in time for the next stable release.
If there are any Debian developers out there: please send me a
message, I could really use a sponsor.
Thanks,
 - Keegan
---------------------






-----Original Message-----
From: plug-admin at lists.pdxlinux.org
[mailto:plug-admin at lists.pdxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Carla Schroder
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 4:11 PM
To: plug at lists.pdxlinux.org
Subject: [PLUG] homegrown WAP

I'm thinking of building my own wireless access point. The low-cost 
commercial ones, like Linksys, Netgear, etc. have only a limited 
browser admin interface. winduhs users get more management utilities, 
though you still don't get shell access.

The major concern I have is antenna placement. If I use a PCI wireless

card in an old desktop machine, with the antenna poking out the back, 
will I have a poorer signal? How much does antenna placement matter 
inside a building, like a house, or small office?

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carla Schroder
www.tuxcomputing.com
this message brought to you
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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